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Wednesday, 9 July 2014

The Event that Sparked World War I: the Plot and Plotters

Mehmed Mehmedbasic

Mehmedbasic was the only Muslim
involved in the plot to assassinate Franz Ferdinand. At 27 (or 26; there is uncertainty about the year of his birth which is given either as 1886 or 1887) he was the oldest of the conspirators who took a
direct part in the assassination.

Although belonging to the Muslim community in Bosnia, which was (traditionally) loyal to the Austro-Hungarian empire, Mehmedbasic's political sympathies lay firmly with the Serb nationalists.

Mehmedbasic was a trained carpenter
from the Hercegovina town of Stolac. His father was a feudal landlord, but the
family had fallen on hard times.

Mehmedbasic wanted to get out of
Hercegovina. In January 1914, he allowed his father’s last servile kmets to buy
their freedom and travelled to France; to the southern city of Toulouse, to be
precise. He wanted to attend a meeting.

It is not clear what exactly happened
in this meeting which was also attended by radical ‘Young Bosnians’. According
to some historians, this was the meeting in which the seeds of the plot that
eventually killed Ferdinand were sown. According to others it was just one of
the many plots that were being hatched on an almost daily basis in those extraordinary times.

Vladimir Gacinovic spoke at this
meeting. Gacinovic was one of the original ‘Young Bosnians’. Although he was
not officially the leader of the organization—there was no leader—he was the
‘guiding spirit’. He was highly critical of what he saw as the passivity and
indolence of the older Serbs and repeatedly railed against them. He travelled
to study in Switzerland where he came into contact with Russian
revolutionaries. He had association with Leon Trotsky.

Lots of potential targets of
assassination, including Franz Ferdinand, were discussed in the meeting in Toulouse;
but Gacinovic impressed on the collective minds of the congregate the urgent
need to assassinate Oskar Potiorek, the governor of Bosnia. Mehmedbasic was
given the honour of assassinating Potiorek. He was supposed to kill Potiorek
with a poisoned dagger!

Mehmedbasic set off for Sarajevo with
a knife and a small phial of poison. As he was travelling on the train he heard
that the gendarmes were searching the train for someone. Panicking, the
would-be assassin ran to the toilet and threw away the dagger and the phial.
Afterwards he realised that the gendarmes were looking for a petty thief.

Mehmedbasic, despite this setback, did
not give up on his ambition to assassinate general Potiorek. He returned to his
native town of Stolac, obtained a revolver and went back to Sarajevo. By this
time the impending visit of the heir-Apparent was announced.

It is not exactly known how
Mehmedbasic came to be involved in the plot to assassinate Franz Ferdinand, or, for that matter, how he got introduced to the plotters.. Most probably he knew of
them via his association with the ‘Young Bosnians’ organization. It also seems
clear that his contact with the plotters was Danilo Ilic. It is very likely that like most of the plotters save Gavro Princip and Danilo Ilic, Mehmedbasic was unaware of the identities of the other men involved in the plot.

According to some historians, Ilic
wrote to Mehmedbasic in March 1914 and informed him that there was going to be
an assassination attempt on the Heir-apparent and guns and bombs would be
provided. Ilic informed Mehmedbasic that the assassination of Ferdinand would
now have to take precedence over the assassination of Potiorek! According to
others, the two met in person in the Bosnian town of Mostar.

Mehmedbasic told Ilic that he had
given his word to Gacinovic that he would kill Potiorek, and he did not want to
change the targets without running it past Gacinovic.

Mehmedbasic and Ilic then wrote a
joint letter to Gacinovic and soon they received a two-word reply: ‘Forward
Lions!’

Mehmedbasic then travelled back to his
native town of Stolac awaiting further instructions from Ilic.

On 26 June (two days before the
Archduke was assassinated) Mehmedbasic received a telegram from Ilic summoning
him to Sarajevo. Mehmedbasic arrived in Sarajevo and booked himself into a hotel.
There he met with Ilic, Princip and some others, and the group sat talking till
the early hours of the morning, Ilic regaling them with exciting stories of
Russian revolutionaries.

On the evening of 27 June Ilic again
met with Mehmedbasic and gave him the bomb with some instructions about how to
use it. (Mehmedbasic had never handled a bomb before.)

On the day Archduke was assassinated
Mehmedbasic was assigned a position (by Ilic) at the head of the avenue of
assassins (near Cumurja Bridge), the oldest and supposedly the most determined of the assassins.

But Mehmedbasic did not throw the
bomb. Later he told a friend that Ilic had advised him not to throw the bomb
unless he had recognised the Archduke; he could always throw the bomb later
when the procession came back down Appel Quay from the town hall.

Years later, when he spoke to the
historian Albertan, Mehmedbasic claimed that the real reason he did not throw
the bomb was that just as the procession was approaching, a gendarme stood next
to him. He was therefore afraid to throw the bomb (Mehmedbasic said) as he might have
been seen and given the plot away. Perhaps the real reason was, like some of
the other plotters, Mehmedbasic lost his nerve at the last minute. He ran off
as soon as he heard Cabrinovic’s bomb exploding.

Mehmedbasic was the only one of the 28
June plotters who escaped and never faced the trial. However, a few years later
he was arrested and faced trial for his alleged involvement in another
assassination conspiracy (Salonika trial); but that is another story.

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Welcome to my blog. This blog is mostly about books—20th and 21st century fiction and some non-fiction, to be precise—but not only about them. I shall be writing about some other interests of mine such as language, music, wine, interesting places I’ve been to, and random topics that happen to interest me at a given point in time.
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